Sustainability is not just about money

Sustainability is too often associated solely with funding. Community media projects are considered 'sustainable' - and therefore 'successful' - when they manage to finance their operations. Little attention has been given to other crucial aspects of sustainability: institutional and social. Money is important, but the main pillar that sustains community media is its community's participation.

Alternative, independent and citizen's media have tried to solve the sustainability puzzle for more than fifty years. Community radio stations number thousands - particularly in Latin America but also in Africa and Asia - and they will all claim that they have a hard time surviving; nevertheless they do, year after year. Many are being supported by NGOs, cooperation agencies, progressive churches, solidarity groups and some even by the government but that only tells part of the story. They would not have survived if their constituency, the community was not committed to them.

There are exceptional cases of communities that are also committed to providing financial support. This happened for over 30 years at miners' radio stations in Bolivia, where poor mineworkers donated one day of their salary each month to their stations. However, collaboration in funding was never the main highlight of this particular experience but the fact that the mineworkers had total control, made the decisions on programming and participated in setting principles and planning strategies. As a result their social organisations grew in strength, such that for many years their points of view on national issues determined political debate.

The Bolivian experience illustrates that owning the decision-making process and participating in programming are key elements for social sustainability, while institutional sustainability is the result of internal democracy and a favourable political environment:

• Social sustainability relates to the political and communicational platform and has much to do with long-term commitment and participation. In addition to including ownership at its core, it is about articulating issues such as cultural and linguistic identity, generating local content relevant to community life, and strengthening collective and individual voices.
• Institutional sustainability is the framework that facilitates participatory processes. On the one hand, it has to do with existing regulations and state policies - the political atmosphere that allows an experience to be developed without censorship or external pressures. On the other hand, it relates to procedures and relationships within the community radio, internal democracy, decision-making and transparent management.

The political environment is not to be underestimated: issues of power constantly influence sustainability, often hidden behind legislation constraints. The privatisation of radio frequencies, promoted by multilateral financing organisations, has worsened a situation where the media is owned by a few and private media networks are expanding beyond national borders.

Civil society organisations in each country need to fight for legislation that protects their community media against such privatisation, unfair commercial practices and pressures of large private media owners. Negotiations between civil society organisations and governments are necessary to reach consensus and avoid reproducing the divide that is now clear.

Alfonso Gumucio-Dagron
Communication for Social Change Consortium
14 South Orange Avenue
South Orange
NJ 07079
USA
Gumucio@communicationforsocialchange.org

'Take Five: A Handful of Essentials for ICTs in Development' by Alfonso Gumucio-Dagron, in The one to watch: radio, new ICTs and interactivity, edited by Bruce Girard, Rome: FAO, 2003
www.comunica.org/1-2-watch/html/download.htm

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